Can you look without the voice in your head commenting, drawing conclusions, comparing, or trying to figure something out?

To the ego, the present moment hardly exists. Only past and future are considered important. This total reversal of the truth accounts for the fact that in the ego mode the mind is so dysfunctional. It is always concerned with keeping the past alive, because without it - who are you?

Everybody who is not awake spiritually is totally identified with and run by their thinking mind - the incessant voice in the head.

[Relationships] do not cause pain and unhappiness. They bring out the pain and unhappiness that is already in you

Nothing that was real ever died, only names, forms, and illusions.

Buddha is said to have given a "silent sermon" once during which he held up a flower and gazed at it. After a while, one of those present, a monk called Mahakasyapa, began to smile. He is said to have been the only one who had understood the sermon. According to legend, that smile (that is to say, realization) was handed down by twenty-eight successive masters and much later became the origin of Zen.

Even within the seemingly most unacceptable and painful situation is concealed a deeper good, and within every disaster is contained the seed of grace.